Time to post these timely words from Tom Robbins again...

[Webster Green]

In response to this very moving story:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=561474&mesg_id=562304

“When a man confines an animal in a cage, he assumes ownership of that animal, but an animal is an individual; it cannot be owned. When a man tries to own an individual, whether that individual be another man, an animal, or even a tree, he suffers the consequences of an unnatural act.”

“Have you ever watched visitors at a managerie or zoo – the fools they make of themselves, the way they leer and snigger and vex and demand entertainment and taunt? A caged beast, like an excess of alcohol, reduces man to his most banal dimensions. And he is only slightly better behaved when observing human inmates of prisons and institutions.”

“A creature, human or otherwise, that has had its freedom compromised, has been degraded. In a subconscious reaction that combines guilt, fear, and contempt, the keepers of the cage – even the observers of the caged – are degraded themselves. The cage is a double degrader. Any bar, whether concrete or intangible, that stands between a living thing and its liberty is a communicable perversity, dangerous to the sanity of everyone concerned.”

Tom Robbins
‘Another Roadside Attraction’
copyright 1971 Bantam Books